1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a confidential printing system allowing for printing of only a print job whose system user is authenticated, and more particularly to a print-job-information-display system, program and method, print-job holding apparatus, print-job-holding-apparatus-control program and method, print-job manager, print-job-manager-control program and method, printer and printer-control program and method, that is suited to display the information of a print job whose system user is authenticated, as to a plurality of printers of a confidential printing system wherein the printers, having a confidential printing function, are connected through a network.
2. Related Art
There is an existing image-output control method and image-output apparatus, described in JP-A-2001-306273, wherein a person who instructed for printing is allowed to obtain a printing matter without being stolen a glance from a third person.
In the image-output control method and image-output apparatus of JP-A-2001-306273, when an authentication code is sent together with printing data from a client apparatus, a printer system generates collating data from the received printing data instead of immediately executing a printing. The printing data is encrypted by means of the authentication code, to generate save data. The save data and the collating data are associated together and stored in a storage device. When the user selects the save data and inputs an authentication code, the printer server decrypts the save data by use of the authentication code inputted, and determines whether or not the decryption has been done correctly. In the case correctly done, the decryption result is printed by the printer system.
In the system requiring a user's authentication upon printing an image, the printing data is temporarily held in the printers so that printing is allowed only for the printing data the user is authenticated, as in the existing art JP-A-2001-306273.
There is another existing art adapted to display a list of print-job information held by printers on a user-by-user basis. Printing is made only for the printing job corresponding to the information the user designated for a print job desired to print (see JP-A-9-39311).
However, in the art disclosed in JP-A-9-39311, where a plurality of print jobs are held, say, sporadically over a plurality of printers connected through a network, there is a difficulty in displaying a list of all the pieces of print-job information being held sporadically.
Meanwhile, such a list of print-job information is not desired to be glanced by a third person from a view point of the characteristic of the system of JP-A-2001-306273 and JP-A-9-39311. When a list is displayed in such a place as possibly glanced by a third person, the user desirably can search an objective print job in a short time to a possible extent.